Liberals state that they are fighting for women's "access" to contraceptives. In the same breath they state the 98% of Catholics already use contraceptives. Clearly, there is no "access" issue. It's laughable...
The public cost of unintended pregnancy is estimated to be about 11 billion dollars per year in short term medical costs.[11] This includes costs of births, one year of infant medical care and costs of fetal loss.[11] Preventing unintended pregnancy would save the public over 5 billion dollars per year in short term medical costs.[11] Savings in long term costs and in other areas would be much larger.[11] By another estimate, the direct medical costs of unintended pregnancies, not including infant medical care, was $5 billion in 2002.[27]
[edit] TeensSee also: Adolescent sexuality in the United States
Of the 800,000 teen pregnancies per year,[28] over 80% were unintended in 2001.[1] One-third of teen pregnancies result in abortion.[28] In 2002, about 9% of women at risk for unintended pregnancy were teenagers,[20] but about 20% of the unintended pregnancies in the United States are to teenagers.[29] A somewhat larger proportion of unintended births are reported as mistimed, rather than unwanted, for teens compared to women in general (79% mistimed for teens vs. 69% among all women in 1998).[30]
[edit] PreventionIn the US it is estimated that 52% of unintended pregnancies result from couples not using contraception in the month the woman got pregnant, and 43% result from inconsistent or incorrect contraceptive use; only 5% result from contraceptive failure, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute.[1] Contraceptive use saved an estimated $19 billion in direct medical costs from unintended pregnancies in 2002.[27]
In 2006, publicly funded family planning services (Title X, medicaid, and state funds) helped women avoid 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, thus preventing about 860,000 unintended births and 810,000 abortions.[31] Without publicly funded family planning services, the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in the United States would be nearly two-thirds higher among women overall and among teens; the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double[31] The services provided at publicly funded clinics saved the federal and state governments an estimated $5.1 billion in 2008 in short term medical costs.[31] Nationally, every $1.00 invested in helping women avoid unintended pregnancy saved $3.74 in Medicaid expenditures that otherwise would have been needed.[31]
Unintended pregnancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
